A Chadian government spokesman said Tuesday his nation was in "a state of war" with Sudan after a Chadian rebel group said it shot down a government plane.The government spokesman, Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, said the Chadian military reconnaissance plane was shot down in eastern Chad on Tuesday, and a rebel group claimed responsibility. Doumgor blamed neighboring Sudan for backing the rebels. The plane was downed in Chad's volatile east, close to the Sudanese border, Doumgor said at a news conference. He did not provide other details. "Today we are in a state of war with forces from Sudan," he said. "We consider ourselves under attack by Sudan." An opposition Web site quoted rebel spokesman Ali Izzo as saying rebels had shot down a plane and a helicopter using surface-to-air missiles. The account could not immediately be confirmed.... http://www.cnn.com

Five young girls have been killed in Iraq during a clash between US marines and insurgents in the western city of Ramadi, the US has said. A US military statement said militants on the roof of a house had fired on its forces, who responded with tank fire. It said soldiers searching the building found the bodies of one man and the five girls, one of whom was an infant. Ramadi, 115km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, is located in Anbar province, a stronghold for Sunni Arab militants. The youngest female casualty was six-months-old and the eldest was aged 10. Another female at the scene was injured but refused treatment, the statement said. The fighting began after troops discovered an improvised explosive device on the roadside in north-east Ramadi. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6193620.stm

NATO pressed its members Tuesday to deploy more troops to Afghanistan's volatile south, but Germany resisted any permanent expansion and Canada complained of bearing the brunt of an increasingly bloody mission.Despite the strengthening Taliban insurgency and unexpectedly high casualties, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer insisted the alliance would prevail in its first mission outside Europe. He also expressed hopes that by 2008, Afghan forces could begin taking over security tasks."I would hope that by 2008, we'll have made considerable progress ... (with) effective and trusted Afghan security forces gradually taking control," he said.Defeating Taliban forces "will require the full commitment of our alliance," U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday, calling the Afghanistan mission -- which has mobilized 32,800 troops -- NATO's No. 1 operation....http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/28/nato.afghan.ap/index.html?eref=rss_world

Afghanistan's criminal underworld has compromised key government officials who protect drug traffickers, allowing a flourishing opium trade that will not be stamped out for a generation, an ominous UN report released Tue said. The fight against opium production has so far achieved only limited success, mostly because of corruption, the joint report from the World Bank & the UN Office on Drugs & Crime said. The findings show a "probability of high-level (government) involvement" in drugs, said Doris Buddenberg, the UNODC's Afghanistan representative & co-editor of the report. The report in particular presented a strong indictment of the Interior Ministry, which runs the country's police, & said Afghanistan's criminal underworld could not operate without the support of the political "upperworld." "The majority of police chiefs are involved," one senior police officer told the report's authors on condition of anonymity. "If you are not, you will be threatened to be killed & replaced."...http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,232443,00.html

A Wake County judge ended nearly two years of legal limbo Monday by agreeing that the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the families of four private contractors killed and mutilated in Iraq could go forward in state court. Blackwater Security Consulting, the Blackwater USA division that trained and deployed the high-level security guards, had argued that it was an extension of the military and that the case shouldn't be heard in any court, and particularly not a state court. Wake County Superior Court Judge Don Stephens lifted his long-standing stay on the case Monday after the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court denied Blackwater's requests. "It's ours, whether we want it or not and whether or not we understand why it belongs to us," said Stephens, adding that the case will continue forward in January or February. Blackwater attorneys declined to comment on Stephens' ruling....http://www.thestate.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/16108793.htm

The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday said it asked Pentagon officials for $33.4 billion in extra funding for fiscal 2007 to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and costs related to the "longer war on terror." U.S. lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated about the Pentagon's continued use of emergency budget requests to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, given that the military's costs there are predictable to some extent. The Air Force submitted an initial $17.4 billion supplemental budget request in August for fiscal 2007, which began on Oct. 1, but increased its request by $16 billion this month based on new ground rules allowing costs beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said spokeswoman Maj. Morshe Araujo. "In total, the Air Force FY07 supplemental request now exceeds $33 billion," Araujo said....http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28248374.htm